EU introduces `blue card' plan to attract foreign talent

The EU introduced a "blue card" plan on Tuesday aimed at attracting highly skilled immigrants like doctors, nurses and engineers, even as policymakers across the bloc grappled with how to keep out unskilled migrants.

Similar the green card program for foreign workers in the US, the European plan seeks to draw an additional 20 million workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America in the next two decades. Officials said they hoped that the proposal would reverse a trend in which skilled migrants from developing countries were choosing the US over Europe.

"To maintain and improve economic growth in the EU, it is essential for Europe to become a magnet for the highly skilled," said Franco Frattini, the union's justice and home affairs commissioner.

He pointed to statistics showing that high-skilled foreign workers accounted for 0.9 percent of all workers in the EU, compared with 9.9 percent in Australia, 7.3 percent in Canada and 3.5 percent in the US.

The European Commission, the union's day-to-day executive arm, said skilled migrants were needed to help fill holes in the job market, in particular in information technology and science.

Analysts European countries were behind in attracting foreign talent, in part because salaries in fields like information and technology were dwarfed by those in the US. But they also said this had been offset by tougher US restrictions on special visas since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Europeans' new immigrant-friendly proposal, which requires the approval of member governments, comes as anti-immigrant sentiment pervades national debates about foreign migration. European officials said the proposal was likely to face resistance in countries like Germany that are already struggling with unemployment and integrating their own sizable numbers of immigrants.